The Dialogue & Dignity Series at Whitman College creates space for honest, respectful conversations across differences. It launched in January 2024 in response to urgent questions facing our community and world—beginning with the conflict in Israel and Gaza—and has since grown into a broader commitment to learning how to talk, listen and build understanding even when we don’t agree. The series is co-led by President Sarah Bolton, Provost Elisabeth Merman-Jozwiak, Dean of Students Kazi Joshua and Vice President for Inclusive Excellence John Johnson, with support from faculty, staff and students who care deeply about making dialogue a meaningful part of campus life. Hear from President Bolton on Whitman’s effort to create a campus culture where people feel safe being fully themselves and also challenged to grow:
President Sarah Bolton, Whitman College
President Sarah Bolton:
Our campus includes people from more than seventy nations, and we are a community with a wide range of opinions, identities and experiences. That breadth of perspectives is one of our greatest strengths, and engaging meaningfully with differing views is crucial to the learning that happens here. Our values commit us to both freedom of expression and intentionality about the ways we speak, listen, and hold one another’s humanity…
While our responses to campus concerns are directed by our policies, we also want to build proactively to meet our community’s needs and build our strengths—now and for the future. Guided by the need to deepen our collective capacity for meaningful and respectful dialogue across difference, we are undertaking a new Dialogue and Dignity initiative. The initiative will be co-lead by the Provost, the Dean of Students and the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, who will convene a small group to help build capacity on campus for fruitful and sustained dialogue on contested issues. The group will start with a focus on Israel and Gaza by bringing speakers and programs to campus that offer multiple perspectives on the conflict. Through this group, as well as in other ways, campus leaders will work with outside experts to advance ongoing efforts to address the related issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia. Building from the initial work on issues connected to the crisis in Israel and Gaza, the Dialogue and Dignity group will develop recommendations to advance the practice of meaningful campus dialogue on a wide range of issues, making the most of learning in an inclusive community of diverse perspectives and experiences.
Read President Bolton’s full letter to the community.
Image credit: Whitman College
Back to the Map
